Miscellaneous Items From My Writer's Notebook

#CFT, which represents roughly 120,000 educators, is lobbying for $2.7 million in state funds for a three-year pilot program that would incorporate labor history in civics, economics, and history classes, along with simulations like those run by the DePaul Center. A 2011 study of four popular textbooks found that coverage of the labor movement was "narrow and sometimes  seriously misleading." (Source: Caroline Creston, "Teaching Class Solidarity," "The Nation," April 2, 2018.)

#President Trump has said that "Some countries have a very, very tough penalty -- the ultimate penalty. And by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do." Trump has a well-established pattern of emphasizing harsh and punitive law enforcement, rather than treatment, in response to the opioid crisis.

#"On the face of it, the  idea that Google is discriminating against white men is laugh-out-loud funny," said Joe Nocera in "Bloomberg.com." The company's 2016 diversity report revealed  just two percent of staff were black, and three percent Hispanic, and that the leadership team was 76 percent male and 68 percent  white.

#More Mike Pompeo sayings: As a Kansas congressman, Pompeo said: "Americans had worshiped other Gods and called it multi-culturism." "We'd endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle." He said a "threat to America" was caused by people who deeply believe that Islam is the way. He also said that Muslims "abhor Christians." All Muslims were "potentially complicit" in acts of terror collectively, and he wanted to declare the Muslim Brotherhood to be a "foreign terrorist organization."

#Last month, U.S. District Judge John Bates labeled as "unlawful" Trump's decision to rescind the Obama-era rule protecting young illegal immigrants, and said the government should accept new applicants. Bates stayed the ruling for 90 days to allow the government to provide a better legal argument. He ruled that "DACA's recission was arbitrary and capricious" because the Department filed adequately to explain its conclusion that the program was unlawful.

#Last summer, a federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled that cuts in the DHS budget to the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program were unlawful. The Trump administration had notified 81 organizations that their funding for the sex-education program would end in 2018, not in 2020, as originally planned.

#The Associated Press has identified 30 publicly reported gun-related incidents involving  adults at schools since 2014. Incidents included guns going off by mistake, guns being shot by curious students, and guns being left in various locations.

Pompeo Is the Wrong Choice

Days before his  nomination for Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo said, "there will be no concessions made during ongoing negotiations with North Korea." Refusing to make any concessions in the normal process of negotiations is a sure way to doom the diplomatic process before it begins. Supporting withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal will dramatically undermine efforts to negotiate an agreement with North Korea. 

Pompeo advocated for military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities at the height of delicate (and ultimately successful) nuclear negotiations with Iran, arguing that it would take "under 2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity," which he characterized as "not an insurmountable task for the coalition forces." Pompeo also called for congressional action to foment regime change in Iran.

Last July, Pompeo implied that he supports regime change in North Korea, saying that Kim Jong-Un has to be separated from his nuclear weapons and that the people of North Korea "would love to see him go."

Mike Pompeo has a history of Islamophobia. He once said that Muslim leaders across America are "potentially complicit in acts of terrorism that they do not specifically condemn." He supported legislation that would have labeled the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Presumably in response to reports that the Trump administration was considering making such a designation, CIA analysts released an internal memo in January 2017 warning that labeling the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization "may fuel extremism," and noting that the Muslim Brotherhood has "rejected violence as a matter of official policy and opposed al-Qa'ida and ISIS."

Pompeo has strong connections to some of the most well-known anti-Muslim voices in the country such as Frank Gaffney, who has promulgated conspiracy theories about President Obama being a Muslim, and Brigette Gabriel, who believes that Muslim-Americans should not be allowed to hold public office, and has said that "a practicing Muslim... cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America." This record of Islamophobia makes Pompeo ill-suited for the task of working with leaders of Muslim-majority nations around the world, a critical responsibility for the Secretary of State.

While he was director of the CIA, Pompeo said that he couldn't remember if President Trump asked him to speak against the Russian investigation. He couldn't remember the conversation but he would surely remember if Trump had asked him to do something that was improper. Anyway, Pompeo would not reveal what Trump had told him in a private conservation. Pompeo joined several other high officials in the Trump administration who have refused to reveal conversations with Trump, even when Trump has not invoked executive privilege.